Modern farming is not the bucolic system drawn on the food packages in the supermarket. It's an extractive industry little different from mining or oil drilling. In fact industrial food is largely eating oil, both in energy intensity itself and the use of oil as feedstock for fertilizers and food additives.
The U.S. corn belt has lost a third of its topsoil
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Re: The U.S. corn belt has lost a third of its topsoil
#12Modern farming is not the bucolic system drawn on the food packages in the supermarket. It's an extractive industry little different from mining or oil drilling. In fact industrial food is largely eating oil, both in energy intensity itself and the use of oil as feedstock for fertilizers and food additives.
The most important oil consumption is for driving farm implements, but that can easily be changed to rapeseed oil in the short term and other green energy in the long term.
So no cause for panic.
Re: The U.S. corn belt has lost a third of its topsoil
#13Modern farming is not the bucolic system drawn on the food packages in the supermarket. It's an extractive industry little different from mining or oil drilling. In fact industrial food is largely eating oil, both in energy intensity itself and the use of oil as feedstock for fertilizers and food additives.
Sarah Taber covers this very well on her Twitter (even though she has a particular anti-dairy ax to grind)
Re: The U.S. corn belt has lost a third of its topsoil
#14These topsoil crisis stories have been running since the 1930s, and are still nonsense. Modern farming doesn't depend on soil nutrients. The soil is tested, then minerals and petrochemical fertilizers are added. The soil is basically a growing medium.
I sometimes wonder if these crisis stories are just written by journalists he need to meet their clickbate quota for the week in this Google Adsense driven industry… naaaaa
Re: The U.S. corn belt has lost a third of its topsoil
#15These topsoil crisis stories have been running since the 1930s, and are still nonsense. Modern farming doesn't depend on soil nutrients. The soil is tested, then minerals and petrochemical fertilizers are added. The soil is basically a growing medium.
That seemed like a very substantial crises for wide swaths of the country's population.
Re: The U.S. corn belt has lost a third of its topsoil
#16Re: The U.S. corn belt has lost a third of its topsoil
#17These topsoil crisis stories have been running since the 1930s, and are still nonsense. Modern farming doesn't depend on soil nutrients. The soil is tested, then minerals and petrochemical fertilizers are added. The soil is basically a growing medium.
Re: The U.S. corn belt has lost a third of its topsoil
#18Modern farming is not the bucolic system drawn on the food packages in the supermarket. It's an extractive industry little different from mining or oil drilling. In fact industrial food is largely eating oil, both in energy intensity itself and the use of oil as feedstock for fertilizers and food additives.
Maybe we shouldn't burn ethanol in cars. Maybe we shouldn't load up every food product with corn syrup.
Re: The U.S. corn belt has lost a third of its topsoil
#19Modern farming is not the bucolic system drawn on the food packages in the supermarket. It's an extractive industry little different from mining or oil drilling. In fact industrial food is largely eating oil, both in energy intensity itself and the use of oil as feedstock for fertilizers and food additives.
Re: The U.S. corn belt has lost a third of its topsoil
#20We're ~60 years from running out of topsoil globally if we continue degrading it at the current rate: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/only-60-years-of-...
https://ourworldindata.org/soil-lifespans#:~:text=But%20the%....